A familiar theme courses through a host of 2025's popular films. This concept that stretches far back to the time of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the antagonist is a envious, ruthless billionaire using his enormous resources to smear Earth's superhero icon while manipulating world events for personal gain. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a privileged biotech mogul investing tens of millions to trap the heroes into a prehistoric death trap to boost his wealth. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, purely for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of On-Screen Elite Villainy
In *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin portrays a wealthy villain operating a TV network that makes millions by exploiting and murdering people suffering through abject destitution, while employing AI forgeries and a well-honed propaganda machine to label them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its villains enjoy conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, pushing them from their homes and toward imprisonment or servitude. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, contrasts the tough people of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in lavish gold-and-jade palaces floating overhead. Even, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to bring about global armageddon — to make money, naturally.
There’s nothing especially new in a run of movies taking it as a given that the affluent have too much power, lack ethics or compassion, and a endless, demanding desire for greater riches. "Elites are the bad guys and everyday folks are heroes" as a plot device dates back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his always poor Little Tramp character against corporate bosses, authority figures, and inept, drunken millionaires. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that updated that very premise for the era of the rapacious, destructive Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is incompatible with fundamental decency, and exalt the defusing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of elite figures.
The Catharsis That Fails to Transform
And yet, for some reason, we never actually consuming the elite. On each occasion politicians respond to a tragic gun violence event by faulting graphic media, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if frequent consumption to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — undoubtedly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. Still the headlines makes it obvious every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans innately equate riches with competence and social worth, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies conveying the reverse.
If anything, it appears that the endless parade of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that gets in the way of meaningful change. Given a steady diet of predominantly uplifting fables where the hero prevails, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away feeling good about right prevailing. These films are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will identify any bad apples among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves on their own merit.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies are not novel in that sense, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting more furious, more incisive, more direct, and seemingly more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory in the current era to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they oppressed, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were slaughtered by legendary creatures (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Almost none of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the packed into a police car conclusion, possibly since it’s become so apparent that affluent individuals operate under their own legal rules, and are highly probable to buy their way out."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome isn’t cathartic anymore. Rather, these villains are apt to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Outliers
A few stories differ, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself banished to the computer world, teasing that he is being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
